Discuss

[malignd at aol.com]

We are not all the semi-famous Baby Tyrone who was handed over to be the subject of experimentation.  Certanly I wasn't.  You, I don 't know ...


We are all experimented on as children.





-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Feb 12, 2013 12:10 am
Subject: Re: Discuss



On Feb 11, 2013, at 9:14 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> From: David Morris 
> Sent: Feb 9, 2013 11:42 PM 
> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" 
> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" 
> Subject: Re: Discuss 
> 
> Your fault with Slothrup's disappearance is too literal.  He transcends his 
creators by evaporating into the void,  Pointsman's biggest fear was the golum, 
the experiment gone awry.  Rogue.  So they would rather kill it than lose 
control of it.  Slothrup  evades, but not before becoming a Buddha.
> 
> 
> On Saturday, February 9, 2013, wrote:
> Don't really believe in any sort of deterministic Fate - there are too many 
incalculable and unpredictable variables.  At any rate, I'd say that what 
happens in Slothrop's life has more to do with the fact that he was experimented 
on as a baby, than anything to do with his friendly, and smart but hedonistic 
character.
> 
> Laura
> 

We are all experimented on as children. How could it be otherwise? My feeling is 
that the particular artificiality, the human as behavioral, chemical experiment 
aspect of Slothrop represents the tinkering of the larger system with systems of 
control and information feedback. It shows how deep the inward incursions of 
that model will go. Slothrop's story shows the roots of this thinking in 
Calvinism, Pharisaic notions of God's control of history, or more recently of 
science as simply technos for the colonial enterprise.   But all the time this 
theme is being developed there is the clear and both delightful and terrifying 
story of the thousand ways this system has gone awry, has lost control,  and 
cannot guide or predict anything but explosives up its own ass.  Slothrop is 
like  particles of light that seem to illumine the pattern of attack, a tool 
which properly used may provide escape from death itself, but the more the self 
appointed experimenters know of his rocket man velocity( velocity which may be 
approaching a kind of escape velocity) the less is known about where or even 
whether he is. Where isn't he? Who isn't he? Which part of his time is lesser or 
greater or unconnectable from any other part of his time. Why does he want to 
escape control?  

I am dubious about fate too. We may be free whether we like it or not. But can 
we leave the cave and see something more like the fullness of the world, wake 
up, make ourselves at home, make peace with our freedom, learn to play rather 
than kill.











 
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